TWO police officers are to go on trial over allegations of assault and then lying in court.

The officers are 35-year-old Steven Harker, of Dunfermline, and 30-year-old Gordon Butchart, from Polmont.

They were charged after giving evidence in a trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court last year.

That case related to an incident in Dunfermline in late 2018. A man and woman were arrested in their home by the officers and it is now alleged they were assaulted.

The officers are also accused of lying when giving evidence at the trial of the man and woman in June 2019.

Harker and Butchart deny all the charges and a trial date has now been set.

It is alleged that on November 15 2018 at Willowbank Brae, Dunfermline, in their capacity as serving police constables and whilst acting together, they assaulted a man residing there, seized him by the body, threw him on to a couch, choked him, repeatedly stabbed him on the back with a key or keys, kneed him on the body and struck his head against a wall, all to his injury

It is also alleged that Harker assaulted a woman who was also living there, by seizing her.

It is further alleged that on June 12 last year at Dunfermline Sheriff Court, having been sworn in as witnesses at the trial of the man and woman, they wilfully provided false evidence that the man had deliberately headbutted a wall during the course of his arrest, the truth being that they had assaulted him by deliberately striking his head against a wall, to his injury.

Harker faces another charge that he provided false evidence that he had not seized the woman, the truth being, as he knew well, he had done.

The accused men were not present when the case called at Dunfermline Sheriff Court but submitted not guilty pleas through their solicitors.

The defence successfully called for the trial to be moved to another venue.

Some members of Dunfermline court staff and Sheriff James Macdonald, who presided at the trial in June, could be called as witnesses.

The trial will take place at Dundee Sheriff Court on June 16. There will be an intermediate diet at the same court on April 23.